In order to allow a speech recognition result to be used by an application, it is necessary to configure a speech recognition system using appropriate language models and search means in accordance with a purpose to use the speech recognition result and speech content.
In conventional applications, since a speech and a purpose to use the recognized speech have a one-to-one correspondence, as in a command input system using voice, for example, it is enough to configure one speech recognition system in accordance with this purpose to use the recognized speech.
Recently, however, due to development of a recognition technology of dialogue speech (spoken-utterance speech) between humans, a system for recognizing a certain speech in accordance with various purposes of applications and using the recognized speech has been studied. Among the various applications, there are an application that converts a dialogue to characters word by word in order to record the dialogue, and an application that extracts a specific expression from a dialogue in order to extract information from the dialogue, for example.
In these applications, optimal constituent elements (language information and search means) of a speech recognition system are respectively different. If speech recognition results respectively suited for the applications can be simultaneously provided by one speech recognition system, a usage scene of speech recognition will be extended and convenience will be enhanced.
As a configuration in which one speech recognition system is handled by a plurality of applications, there is the configuration disclosed in Patent Document 1, for example.
FIG. 10 is a diagram showing the configuration disclosed in Patent Document 1. As shown in FIG. 10, this conventional speech recognition system is constituted by a speech recognition unit 12 that recognizes a speech, an application program management table 13 that manages information on a plurality of applications, and a message processing unit 11 that specifies a recognition vocabulary for a speech input and a transmitting destination of a recognition result of speech recognition means, based on the information in the application program management table.
A message sent from an application is interpreted by the message processing unit 11. Based on instructions of the message processing unit 11, an application program management table 13 determines the vocabulary targeted for recognition and the transmitting destination of the recognition result. The speech recognition unit 12 performs speech recognition using the determined vocabulary targeted for recognition, and transmits the result of recognition to an application program 2 determined by the message processing unit 11.
Patent Document 1:
JP Patent Kokai Publication No. JP-A-07-140998